In a move that has ignited fierce political and public controversy, the Israeli government has installed Yehuda Eliyahu, a West Bank settler and long-time close associate of far-right Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich, as the new director of the Israel Land Authority (ILA), the powerful state body that controls all national land allocation and management, including territory in the occupied West Bank.
The appointment received formal approval from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, after advancing through a public appointments committee the previous week. The approval was not unanimous: the committee’s own legal adviser formally opposed the nomination, citing that Eliyahu’s decades-long personal and political ties to Smotrich create an unavoidable conflict of interest.
Eliyahu brings a well-documented hardline record to the new role. Prior to taking this post, he led the Settlement Administration within Israel’s Ministry of Defense, a position where he oversaw what watchdog groups describe as the largest seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank in modern Israeli history. Alongside Smotrich, he co-founded Regavim, an influential hardline nationalist group that frames its mission as protecting Israeli national land and resources. Originally focused on the West Bank, where the organization has repeatedly pushed to remove Palestinian communities from their land to expand Jewish settlements, Regavim has shifted its scope in recent years to target areas in the Negev and Galilee, regions where a large share of Israel’s Palestinian citizen population resides.
The ILA is one of the most powerful administrative bodies in Israel, controlling roughly 92% of all state land—equaling approximately 20 million dunams of territory— and managing a multi-billion shekel annual budget. It dictates land allocation for residential housing, public infrastructure, and national development projects across the country, and holds direct authority over land management for Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Supporters of the appointment have framed it as a critical strategic shift aligned with the current Netanyahu government’s core nationalist policy goals. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who has himself proposed a controversial large-scale land redistribution plan in the Negev that local Palestinian village leaders have decried as a “violent dispossession plan”, called the appointment as impactful as installing a new chief for the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. Chikli criticized what he called the ILA’s previous restrained stance on expanding Jewish settlement in the Galilee and Negev, saying he expects Eliyahu to pivot the agency’s policy to advance Jewish population growth in both regions—an explicit government goal designed to shift the demographic balance in favor of Jewish Israelis. Likud Knesset member Ariel Kallner, who chairs the parliamentary Galilee caucus, echoed that praise, highlighting Eliyahu’s work in the West Bank and claiming he “led a revolution” in cutting through bureaucratic barriers to expand settlement, and has long pushed for Jewish growth in northern Israel’s Galilee region.
Critics, however, have denounced the appointment as a dangerous escalation of the government’s anti-Palestinian, ethno-nationalist agenda. Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors land policy and settlement expansion in the West Bank, documented that Eliyahu himself resides in an unauthorized West Bank settlement outpost, where Israeli forces and settlers block local Palestinian farmers from accessing and working their agricultural land. The group added that during Eliyahu’s tenure leading the Settlement Administration, he oversaw “the largest project of land dispossession and illegal construction since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank”, and charged that his entire public service career has been dedicated to violating Israeli law. In a harsh statement, Kerem Navot called the appointment further proof that the current Israeli government is “corrupt, racist, and lawbreaking”, with extreme destructive goals.
Israel’s leading environmental umbrella group Life and Environment also condemned the nomination as inappropriate, warning it will deepen systemic discrimination against Palestinian citizens in southern Israel’s Negev, who already face widespread neglect and exclusion from planning and development processes.
Eliyahu’s own public statements leave little doubt about his long-term policy aims. He has openly supported the full formal annexation of the occupied West Bank, and has previously stated the defense ministry was laying the groundwork for that move. He has also called for a full reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and the rebuilding of Israeli settlements there, advocating for an all-out war to “eliminate this evil” and claiming the entire Palestinian population of Gaza should be expelled “down to the very last one” to make way for Jewish settlements on what he calls Israel’s “ancestral land”.
According to a report from Israeli financial daily Calcalist, legal challenges to the appointment are already in the works, with multiple petitions expected to be filed with Israel’s High Court of Justice in the coming days. The report notes that Eliyahu’s close ties to Smotrich and questions about his professional qualifications may limit his chances of keeping the senior post.